Ulysses S. Grant
To win in a confrontation we train to take the initiative, and keep it until the threat is done. We cannot afford to rely mainly on defense. Simply reacting to the opponent gives him the initiative.
Taking the initiative means acting decisively, at the right moment, with complete commitment of will, joined to the body and spirit in skillful action.
We want to understand the opponent, know his habits, plans, strengths and weaknesses. But we use that understanding to act, not merely to guess, plan or respond.
In the midst of the American Civil War of the 1860’s, Union General Ulysses S. Grant, senior military commander, turned the tide of the war in the Union’s favor. The Union Army had been set back again and again by the brilliant Confederate General Robert E. Lee.
Grant took charge. He summoned his commanders to his field headquarters. He told them:
“…I am heartily tired of hearing about what Lee is going to do… Go back to your command, and try to think what are we going to do ourselves, instead of what Lee is going to do…”
This is the mindset we need as martial artists, to prevail in conflict.
Grant was described by a staff officer this way: “… He habitually wears an expression as if he had determined to drive his head through a brick wall, and was about to do it. I have much confidence in him.”
Grant’s will was his most formidable weapon. He was described in 1864, more than a year before the end of the war, at a time when the outcome of the war was uncertain, as
“…a man of a good deal of rough dignity; rather taciturn; quick and decided in speech. His face had three expressions: deep thought; extreme determination; and great simplicity and calmness.”
He won the war. His strategy and methods were studied, the daily dispatches from the front, were read and analyzed by the leaders of nations and empires, east and west. He was elected President of the United States, twice. After he retired he toured the world. He sailed to Japan.
Japan had recently been “opened,” at gunpoint, to world trade, by the American Navy, in the 1850’s. By the 1860’s the samurai government had been overthrown. A modernizing, western-looking Imperial government took its place. To the new Meiji government, the power of the modern, European model of technology and business, was clearly the way of the future. The Europeans were dominating China and their influence was expanding.
Grant arrived in Japan in the 1870’s. He was gracious, where other westerners had been perceoved as arrogant, ignorant and condescending. He seemed to love the people, culture, their country. He was welcomed in a way no foreigner had ever been.
By this time the tension between China and Japan over the possession of Okinawa and the Ryukyu Islands had been escalating for decades. Dominance of trade routes, then as now, was a tripwire. The tacit agreement operating at that time and since the 1600’s, allowed the Okinawans to pay tribute to both countries.
This arrangement was no longer acceptable to Japan. China’s position as the Asian hegemon had been undermined by western dominance and by internal division and decline. The Ryukuan royal court preferred the Chinese. It wasn’t up to them. War was brewing. Grant recognized the looming disaster. Grant was instrumental in negotiating a peace that saved the Okinawan Islands, and forestalled war between Japan and China for 15 years.
For those of us practicing Okinawan arts, whose techniques, values and martial culture wereinfluenced by Japan and China and the US, Grant is relevant. In his example of warrior skill, and leadership vision, certainly. He may even be able to offer some wisdom, in his experience of war and work for peace.
Footnote: Quotations are from Colonel Theodore Lyman, who served on the staff of Major General George G. Meade and was a US Army archivist; from Letters from Lyman to his wife, March and April, 1864.
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Post copyright © 2025 Jeffrey Brooks, MountainKarateNC.com, Yamabayashi Ryu, Mountain Karate Dojo, in the mountains of western NC.
Photo credit Ulysses S. Grant, United States Library of Congress
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